Dear Jebus why!

Retr0gamer

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6207542.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=topstory&tag=topstory;title

Shadow of the Colossus is set to be raped by hollywood by a bunch of bellends and hacks. I think these are genuine tears of sadness in my eyes.

Anima

Could be alright.

It won't be but theres always that glimmer of hope.

Fnz

Boooo-urns.... boo-urns forever!!!!

Mr E

I thought "Hmmm... this could be good if done right". Then I read the byline from that article:

Team Ico's beloved 2005 PS2 adventure is being turned into a film…by the screenwriter of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

****.

the_syco

Would you prefer if it was done by Uwe Boll?

Otacon

the_syco wrote: »

Would you prefer if it was done by Uwe Boll?

After watching the Chun Li film, what's the difference!?

humanji

Computer game to movie transistions rarely work, so you'd be mad to think it might be remotely good, no matter who was involved. My problem is that McG is remaking 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

K.O.Kiki

This will be AWESOME! Think of all the additional story they can ladle on with Hollywood-level dialogue!
Or even better, what if they set Shadow of the Colossus -- in the future! And then it'll be Shadow of the ROBOTS!
And why just have it be about 16 giant robots? BOOOO-RIIIING!!
Let's make it about 1 giant robot, and his 5 underlings who are all human-sized.
And then we'll have lots of witty banter between the "dumb" robot and the "sassy" robot, and so on.

Actually, hold the phone there folks, we can't have a sassy robot -- we'll have a sassy LOVE INTEREST! You can't float a "dead" princess in Hollywood; she's gotta be large & in charge. And black! Or Asian! We love that ethnic diversity.
Well, except for the hero, he's got to be some Hollywood hunk. And white, because all gamers are white nerds, right? So it's gotta be someone they look up to.

Oh, this project is going to be so awesome. Quick, get Rob Zombie on the phone, I heard he does music now!


:pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

Retr0gamer

the_syco wrote: »

Would you prefer if it was done by Uwe Boll?

I'd prefer if they left it alone.

Exar Khun

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

This will be AWESOME! Think of all the additional story they can ladle on with Hollywood-level dialogue!
Or even better, what if they set Shadow of the Colossus -- in the future! And then it'll be Shadow of the ROBOTS!
And why just have it be about 16 giant robots? BOOOO-RIIIING!!
Let's make it about 1 giant robot, and his 5 underlings who are all human-sized.
And then we'll have lots of witty banter between the "dumb" robot and the "sassy" robot, and so on.

Actually, hold the phone there folks, we can't have a sassy robot -- we'll have a sassy LOVE INTEREST! You can't float a "dead" princess in Hollywood; she's gotta be large & in charge. And black! Or Asian! We love that ethnic diversity.
Well, except for the hero, he's got to be some Hollywood hunk. And white, because all gamers are white nerds, right? So it's gotta be someone they look up to.

Oh, this project is going to be so awesome. Quick, get Rob Zombie on the phone, I heard he does music now!


:pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

Brilliant

Never got to play this game but what other game movies are there?

I can think of House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Postal, Bloodrayne (all by Uwe Boll - I loved in Alone in the Dark how at the original screenings, audiences were so damned confused as to what was going on that on the DVD release, they had to have a 10 minute voice-over explaining the backstory) and the upcoming Halo and Bioshock movies.

humanji

Here's a partial list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games

A lot of crap, but some stuff that's not too bad (Double Dragon is a classic, honest! ).

edit: they're making a file of The Sims? WTF?

GothPunk

I'm thinking that Jerry Bruckheimer's Prince of Persia film might be good, considering he helped turn an amusement park ride into a really popular franchise. Then again I'll probably go see anything with Jake Gyllenhaal in it, heh.

I think that if someone like Bruckheimer or Gore Verbinski made a film adaptation of Shadow of the Colossus, it could turn out well, but the list of people actually involved makes me gag. Wouldn't Shadow of the Colossus make a better arthouse style movie than a blockbuster? Hell they should get Tim Burton to do it in stop motion animation and use the original soundtrack...

Wait, they're going to rape the music from the game, aren't they. *Bleugh*

giggsy664

Pac-man film FTW

:pac:

Jazzy

would they just stop ruining stuff ?
soo annoying. a Doom film could have been epic... but nooooooooooooooo. they have to f**k it up completely and make it not Doom at all and just make it a general film about marines on Mars

Retr0gamer

What gets to me is that Shadow of the Colossus isn't like Gears of War or MGS were they are desperately trying to emulate film. SotC stands out as a piece of art as a videogame. It wouldn't work as a hollywood film and even if it is a good film all it can aspire to be is a good dumb action film. What set the game apart was the emotions you felt as you brought down each colossus. You, the player, were bringing down these magnificent creatures for selfish needs and you really started feeling bad about it. That just won't translate into a film.

There's plenty of games I wouldn't mind seeing turned into films and could work but this one they really should just leave well alone. I really hope that PoP turns out well. The originals story and writing were well within the top tier of hollywood films, I just hope they don't mess it up.

Jazzy

ive always thought an 80's style streets of rage film would be amazing

K.O.Kiki

More like, Streets of Rage/Final Fight were video gaming's homages to 80s action movies.

GothPunk

Retr0gamer wrote: »

What gets to me is that Shadow of the Colossus isn't like Gears of War or MGS were they are desperately trying to emulate film. SotC stands out as a piece of art as a videogame. It wouldn't work as a hollywood film and even if it is a good film all it can aspire to be is a good dumb action film. What set the game apart was the emotions you felt as you brought down each colossus. You, the player, were bringing down these magnificent creatures for selfish needs and you really started feeling bad about it. That just won't translate into a film.

So very true. Sure quite a few games have got to me, but they used very film-like concepts to do it (i.e. cutscenes). Shadow of the Colossus achieves most of it's emotional tugs through the gameplay, which as you say cannot be replicated any other way than to play the game. The lack of dialogue in the game makes it a lot more about experiencing the game and reading into things like you would a poem, so even with a great writer, director and producer it'd be very hard to make a good adaptation.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

There's plenty of games I wouldn't mind seeing turned into films and could work but this one they really should just leave well alone. I really hope that PoP turns out well. The originals story and writing were well within the top tier of hollywood films, I just hope they don't mess it up.

Dude, who cares about story. Three words have me interested. Jake. Gyllenhaal. Shirtless.

I agree, games like PoP and MGS will make the transition to epic blockbuster very well if the time is taken to actually craft a good story with interesting characters and action scenes that are influenced by what made the game popular.

Gummy Panda

GothPunk wrote: »

Dude, who cares about story. Three words have me interested. Jake. Gyllenhaal. Shirtless.

Could you not just settle for brokeback mountain?

Video games to movies suck. Can't think of a single decent one.

johnny_ultimate

There are two major problems with video game adaptations, aside from the given one that pretty much anyone who has ever been involved in these adaptations is a talentless hack.

Firstly they keep choosing the wrong games. Shadow of the Colossus - as Retr0 quite rightly pointed out - is a game first and foremost, with the players actions causing emotional resonance. Admittedly some moments may be possible to transfer to cinema (

the heartbreaking 'horse off the bridge' moment is certainly up there with the horse being eaten by a swamp in the Neverending Story

) but the essence of the atmosphere is likely impossible to transfer. Its the same with something like Mario Bros. - how can anyone possibly capture the spirit of that iconic platformer in anything other than a video game? Its like adapting Rez or something - an exercise in futility. And a related point - does any give a **** about adaptations of stuff like Dead or Alive or Alone in the Dark?

Secondly, few directors have understood the game they're dealing with. Look at Uwe Boll movies, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within or again Mario - they bear no resemblance to their source material. Of course there is going to be a backlash if you do something like that. Imagine you took - for arguments sake - Great Expectations and turned it in a crass teenage sex comedy. Of course the critics would be fuming, as would anyone. So gamers aren't going to be happy unless you create something that resembles the game they know. Despite its many, many flaws Silent Hill at least somewhat drew on the atmosphere of the game - it was clearly set in a familiar Silent Hill. Some of the animated takes on games are meant to achieve this too (I hear the Street Fighter anime getting a lot of praise everytime the subject comes up).

So yeah I think Shadow of the Colossus is pretty much doomed to failure, mainly because by all accounts it is an exercise in utter stupidity. Prince of Persia set pics maybe hint at something that may work well, but then you hear that the director hasn't even played the game (his assistant did, ffs) and the old problems come to the fore again. Game adaptations don't yet have the respect literary or other adaptations do in Hollywood. Actually tbh games in general don't have anything resembling respect yet, when developers are constantly proving that they should. And until Hollywood truly understands games, the adaptations are never going to succeed.

K.O.Kiki

Although you should note that FF:Spirits Within was made by Square themselves, and originally written & concepted by Hironobo Sakaguchi (the creator of Final Fantasy), with some themes similar to FFVII.

fitz0

WTF a Postal movie?

You can't really go wrong there but, wait... it's a Uwe Boll.

Cuddlesworth

I think it can be translated to film. The main problem is translating the sense of scale that the game emits. And the similar sized sense of loss from your/actors actions.

uncleoswald

Didn't Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) try to get a Guitar Hero movie going? I think Mario has to be the most pointless so far because of how they just changed everything so it didn't even resemble Mario. I'd be curious to see how the hell a (bargin basement) screenwriter would approach Pac Man and The Sims movies.

David Lynch's Tetris would certainly be interesting though.

Rhyme

If anything it should be a 45-minute film, all panning bloom, gestural acting and filters on stunning natural views. Minimal dialogue, definitely no words from the protagonist.

As for the colossi themselves, abstract the fuck out of them, a lot of the existing views of them work in a game context, film is an entirely different way of depicting scale and... momentum. If the 'combat' turns into close-ups of the protagonists face and "I've got you now *stabbity-stab*" moments, i'll be pretty pissed.

The main two things in the game, for me at least, were the sense of scale portrayed and the empathy for the characters. If those two things are tampered with, this thing fails.

Mainstream filmmaking has NO place taking a hand in, what is really, a piece of art.

corcaigh07

i can't think of any way how the film can match any of the game's qualities. how for example will they portray the relationship between the main character and agro for example.

how can you have a movie based on a character who can't interact with anyone except for argo and his dead girlfriend? will they have a decent budget in order to portray the colossi properly?

CiDeRmAn

Initially I thought "COOL", Then it was "OH NO", now I've found the capslock key on the lappy and now it's merely "hmmmm...."

To be honest, it's very hard to see how they can possibly turn the story into a big screen friendly version, I mean, a lone guy, on a horse, galloping across empty scrub, on his own, aside from the horse, and slays one after the other of massive creatures, feeling gutted for killing each one before "magically" returning to a temple, to see his deceased love upon an altar, before big voices in the sky tell him of his next act of murder.
What they are likely to do is,
Have a wisecracking sidekick.
Have villages ravaged by the Collosii, so our hero is actually doing a selfless service slaying them.
We'll have plenty of flash backs to whatever starlet plays the love interest, whilst he see's her cold on the slab.
Probably only have 2 or 3 creatures, they may team up and it will suck.

The story and characters of SOTC, they only live in the medium of the vidoegame, they can't exist outside that medium without fundamentally changing the nature of what the artist/creator was trying to do. And so it is nonsensical taking such a tale and making it into a movie.
Now, not all games wouldn't make good films, Ico could be interesting if, say, JJ Abrams took a stab at it, but in something like SOTC, it would just spoil the story and probably damage the legacy of one of the few games with authentic artistic aspirations.

K.O.Kiki

Actually, I think Fumito Ueda has said he doesn't give a damn about being "artistic"; he just wants to make really good video games.
We just hold it up as art because...
well...

IT IS ART.

Ueda just somehow stumbled across it.

Retr0gamer

Leonardo DaVinci was just doing a portrait when he did the mona lisa and lookj how highly that is praised.

im_invisible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l24k_KQg84k

Rhyme

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Leonardo DaVinci was just doing a portrait when he did the mona lisa and lookj how highly that is praised.

The Mona Lisa is overrated.

I went there.

Retr0gamer

I agree but in a world where an unmade bed can win one of the highest honours in art, why not a videogame?

tman

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I agree but in a world where an unmade bed can win one of the highest honours in art, why not a videogame?

Had a day off work recently so I went to the Tate modern. They have a huge room full of bunk beds without matresses, with a random book tied to each one...

How games can be considered a lesser form of art than that kind of sh1te really is beyond me...

Rhyme

tman wrote: »

Had a day off work recently so I went to the Tate modern. They have a huge room full of bunk beds without matresses, with a random book tied to each one...

How games can be considered a lesser form of art than that kind of sh1te really is beyond me...

Were you there in 2004 for 'The Weather Project'?

/artfag

noodler

I've gotta play this game.

K.O.Kiki

The writer speaks.
The SotC-loving internet implodes.